P-I readers bare their fangs in defense of 'Breaking Dawn'

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, August 21, 2008

Fans of Stephenie Meyer, the author of the "Twilight" series, have come out in support of her after former fans lashed out at the series' finale, "Breaking Dawn."

Fans of Stephenie Meyer, the author of the "Twilight" series, have come out in support of her after former fans lashed out at the series' finale, "Breaking Dawn."

Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images

P-I readers bare their fangs in defense of 'Breaking Dawn'

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Who cares if a vampire technically can't father a child? What's the big beef if everyone lives happily ever after? Can't you all stop picking on poor Stephenie Meyer?

That's the sound of P-I readers biting back.

By more than a 3-to-1 ratio, you sided with Meyer in a dust-up over the merits of "Breaking Dawn," the conclusion of her best-selling "Twilight" saga, a teen vampire romance set in Forks.

" 'Breaking Dawn' was amazing," said one Meyer loyalist, 19-year-old "Amelia M." "I laughed, I cried, and at some points in the book I was clapping."

"Breaking Dawn," the breathlessly awaited sequel to "Twilight," "New Moon" and "Eclipse," sold 1.3 million copies on its Aug. 2 release date, a one-day record for publisher Little, Brown. But it also drew heated criticism from some disappointed fans.

Among the complaints: The book seemed thrown together, the ending too tidy, the tone too dark -- especially a gruesome childbirth scene in which Bella's vampire-sired offspring is literally chewed from the womb.

Critics said Bella's teen marriage and pregnancy sent the wrong message and, anyway, Meyer had already established that vampires can't father children, so what's up with that?

Some irate readers even urged series fans to return the book and demand a refund. Ooh, that's gotta bite.

We asked P-I readers if they agreed with the barbs. With e-mails still trickling in, here's the tally: 33 faithful members of the Dawn Squad, nine in Camp Disappointment.

Both sides radiated enough passion to level a nuclear test zone:

"I thought the book was beyond awesome," wrote one stalwart. "So when I heard there were people who got upset about how it turned out, I was pretty pissed off myself."

Another fan urged tuning out the critics: "Don't listen to those people! I just learned of the collection and have read all four in three days. I missed a day of work and two days of eating reading these books. I'd give anything to feel the passion and the love that Bella and Edward share."

But one contrarian, "Vanessa, 17," minced no words about her frustration: "I bought 'Breaking Dawn' the morning it came out, spent all day reading it, and returned it to Borders just before it closed," she wrote. "The woman who gave me my money back looked like she was about to go into shock. But I don't regret returning the dang thing. From the start it just wasn't right."

"I think she is blatantly shoving her Mormon faith down the throats of kids, and not necessarily the best parts of it, either," Valdes-Rodriguez said in an e-mail. "Her series is rife with racist imagery drawn from the Book of Mormon, and an anti-feminist message drawn from same."

That same day, Valdes-Rodriguez updated her blog to acknowledge "several glaring errors" in her supporting evidence and said she planned to pursue a deeper, more carefully documented inquiry.

For the most part, readers have squared off over issues that could only move the meters of the most dedicated Twi-Hards.

For every fan who fumes over the name of Bella's baby (Renesmee), there's another who coos, "It's so beautiful to see how Bella dotes on her amazingly precocious child!"

If the backlash to the backlash proves anything, it's that most people in the throes of passion will happily overlook a few nagging flaws in the service of romance -- even if the love object is a 758-page piece of fiction.

"Christina" put it this way: "What makes me laugh is that people are getting angry at the fact that (Bella) got pregnant with a vampire's child, calling it unrealistic, when we are all reading a vampire series where a vampire and human fall in love! Realistic? No, but did we all fall in love with the idea of love conquering all? Yes."